Yield: 10 slices

Banana Bread Without Baking Soda (Baking Powder Only)

A banana bread leavened by baking powder alone, with the oven numbers for a 9x5 pan, the 3 to 1 swap, and the reason the crust and crumb come out paler.

Prep Time15 minutes

Cook Time1 hour 5 minutes

Cooling in the pan (our estimate)30 minutes

Total Time1 hour 50 minutes

Ingredients

Banana bread

• 2 cups (250 g) all-purpose flour, Weigh to 250 g; that is a little over 2 cups at 120 g per cup
• 2 tsp (8 g) baking powder, 10 mL in the source; 4 g per tsp; check the tin for aluminum
• 12 1/2 tbsp (175 g) unsalted butter, softened, 175 g at about 14 g per tbsp; unsalted is our assumption
• 1 cup (200 g) granulated sugar, 200 g in the source; the King Arthur chart lists 198 g per cup
• 2 large eggs, About 100 g out of the shell, our estimate; the source gives a count only
• 1 1/3 cups (300 g) very ripe bananas, mashed, Weigh the mashed fruit; the King Arthur chart lists 227 g per cup

Instructions

Prepare

1. Heat the oven and the pan. Heat the oven to 350 F (175 C) with a rack in the middle. Grease a 9x5 loaf pan and line it with parchment so the loaf lifts out cleanly.

Mix

1. Whisk the dry ingredients. Whisk the flour and baking powder together in a bowl. Powder is your only lift here, so spread it evenly through the flour.
2. Cream the butter and sugar. Beat the softened butter and sugar until pale and light. With no soda in the bowl, the air you beat in here does a lot of the lifting, so don't rush it.
3. Add the eggs and bananas. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then the mashed banana. The batter may look uneven at this point. That's fine.
4. Fold in the flour. Add the flour mix and fold only until no dry streaks remain. Stop there. Overmixing is the quickest way to a dense loaf.

Bake

1. Bake and check halfway. Scrape the batter into the pan and bake at 350 F for 60 to 65 minutes. Check about halfway through, and tent the top with foil if it is browning fast.
2. Check doneness. Don't go by color. Without baking soda the crust stays lighter. Look for deep golden edges and a toothpick that comes out clean, which is about 212 F (100 C) inside.

Cool

1. Cool before slicing. Cool the loaf in the pan for about 30 minutes, then lift it out and slice into 10 pieces. Let it cool. Really.

Notes

Not baked or tasted by us. The flour, baking powder, butter, sugar, egg and banana amounts, the 350 F oven and the 60 to 65 minutes in a 9x5 pan follow the Bake School baking-powder-only loaf; the card is adapted from it, not copied. The method steps are ours.

Prep time, the 30-minute cooling time, the yield of 10 slices, the softened unsalted butter and the egg weight are our estimates or assumptions. Gram figures for butter and banana are our conversions from King Arthur weights per tablespoon and per cup.

The card lists no salt, as the source figures in our brief list none. If you add salt or use salted butter, the sodium in the nutrition below goes up; see the sodium section.

Nutrition values are estimates calculated from typical USDA FoodData Central values for all-purpose flour, unsalted butter, sugar, large eggs, bananas and baking powder (sodium aluminum sulfate type, 424 mg sodium per tsp), per 1 of 10 slices. Those USDA values for flour, butter, sugar, eggs and bananas are typical figures we did not source in our brief. A different baking powder or salted butter changes the sodium.